What book made you feel 'well there's nowhere to go but down from here, it can't possibly get better than that'
>>25336624
>>25336624Paradise LostMoby-DickGravity's Rainbow
>>25336672>Paradise LostShakespeare is better>Moby-DickWhy not just read Shakespeare?>Gravity's RainbowThis answers my question
>>25336713Shakespeare's body of work is better than Milton's, but Paradise Lost is a better work than any single Shakespeare play.
>>25336713>Why not just read Shakespearebecause he never wrote prose and reading endless dialogue is gay, perhaps?
>>25336729lol no
>>25336729Agreed.>>25336836Name a Shakespeare play better than paradise lost
>>25336988hamlettempesthenry ivhenry vrichard iiilearceasar
>>25336732>he never wrote prose
>>25336624You don't think it would have been improved if an editor had cut down on the obvious Napoleon seething? Even as an anglo it was distracting.
>>25337023napolean seething is good thoughbeit
It's also Hamlet for me. I don't think anything I've read since has ever been as good, except maybe Dante.
>>25337056Actually Evgene Onegin is also up there, unsurpassable.
>>25337034Life and Fate does the "take the dictator down a peg" thing without sounding so assmad. Also a better book. But no one cares because it doesn't enjoy the halo effect afforded to anything written by a Russian prior to the revolution.
>>25337076he never went to war, of course his writing isn't going to be as indignant, he had little skin in the game
>>25337085Try reading a book before you critique it.
>>25337076It's actually just because it isn't better
>>25337098It wasn't a critique
>>25336624>>25336668
The Book of the New Sun. Without narcissism, it just feels like it was written for me. It's a joyous and comforting book, one that I've read dozens of times. War and Peace is fantastic — I love the part where Pierre rails against the Freemasons and then the next chapter is titled, "Pierre Joins the Freemasons." My favorite Russian epic is still The Brothers Karamazov, though.
>>25336624I have been chasing the high I felt after reading The Count of Monte Cristo ever sinceHaven't read War and Peace yet but own it to hopefully read this year. I have been told Les Miserables would hit as hard but I don't know
>>25336624There are some better and a fair amount as good.
>>25337553What in better in your opinion?
>>25336672>>25336713>gravity's rainbowKek
>>25336624Petersburg.
>>25336668>>25337370mogged by hadji murad
>>25336624Three way tie between LOTR, Karamazov, and Blood Meridian
>>25336624Not even joking, but 1984 and The Trial made me audibly gasp at their endings. Nothing has come close to either book for me since.I wish I didn't find Tolstoy and Dostoevsky so mind-numbingly boring...Tolstoy, at the very least, wrote prose like a normal person. Dostoevsky couldn't write a line of human dialogue naturally to save his life, yet he's supposed to be a legendary author?
>>25336668Was going to say this
>didnt readed any bookes since high school>decide to get back into reading, grab a random romance book off of the /lit/ wiki>it's >>25336668>mfw I later realize I accidentally read the greatest novel of all time as the first book of my adult life and the entire arc of my reading experience thereafter will at best be a managed decline
>>25337422I think as far as pure entertainment goes Monte Cristo is actually a good shout. It might not be the deepest literature, but it's hard to think of a novel that's more "fun"
Moby Dick
>>25336988OthelloMacbeth
>>25337370Great book but Metamorphosis is more or less the same thing as this with better aesthetics.
>>25338655nta but never thought of it that way, guess you're onto something
>>25338655I've read both & no man, no it is not lol
